Mentoring

Mentoring youth in agriculture program

Now more than ever, the world needs young people proactively contributing to innovative and environmentally and economically sustainable agricultural development. Rising temperatures, rapid urbanisation and unpredictable weather events are already having huge economic and social impacts on agriculture that are expected to increase in future. For humanity to adapt, the world needs fresh ideas, renewed knowledge and partnerships across disciplines, geographies and generations.

The next generation of farmers, researchers, entrepreneurs, scientists, industrialists and extension workers are best placed to develop ideas, restore knowledge and catalyse cross-disciplinary partnerships.

To support a new generation of people prepared to proactively contribute to innovative and sustainable agricultural development, YPARD is rolling out a global mentoring programme from 2015 to 2018.

The programme aims to unlock the potential of hundreds of budding young agriculturalists by providing opportunities to engage and connect them to senior agricultural professionals in business, research, extension services and ICT.

After three months of scoping, YPARD decided to test different types of mentoring during the pilot phase to determine the most suitable format to scale up:

In June 2015, YPARD launched a 12-month pilot mentoring program in Kenya. 15 YPARD members - farmers, students, entrepreneurs, young scientists and extension workers from across Kenya – have been paired with mentors based on their sectors and skill sets.

Mentors and mentees first met during a three-day orientation workshop led by African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) to consolidate the relationship and understanding in the mentor-mentee pairs, equipping them with communication, conflict resolution, networking and gender in the workplace skills. With support from their mentors, mentees developed a purpose road map and development journal, clearly outlining their 10 year visions/goals and the technical skills, interpersonal skills, academic/professional qualifications, behaviour change and action needed at each step of the way to reach their long term goal.

Each mentee met with their mentor for at least two hours per month (over the phone, Skype or face to face). See the profiles of pilot program mentors and mentees here: ypard.net/mentoring/profiles

Online program for women in agribusiness

In November 2015, 14 of YPARD’s female entrepreneurs were selected to spend 12 months working virtually one-on-one with a mentor to achieve key business goals. Mentees will build their business skills and digital literacy through a comprehensive online training program.

Youth in Landscapes Mentoring Program

For the past three years, YPARD has partnered with the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) to run the Youth in Landscapes Initiative. For many of these youth, the GLF is their first international conference and they find it challenging to navigate the complexity of topics being discussed, to speak up in discussion forums, or to network with senior professionals.

The Youth in Landscapes Mentoring Program aims to capitalise on the face-to-face time that conferences enable, by pairing youth delegates with senior delegates attending the conference and encouraging them to attend a GLF session together. Following an extensive application and selection process, 22 youth from 17 countries have been partnered with 22 senior professionals from business, government, NGOs and research institutions.

A small subset of these pairs were chosen to co-design a 6-12 month mentoring program, tailored to each of their needs, during a design sprint workshop on 5 December, 2015.

As part of the pilot Young Agripreneurs Project (YAP) six young agripreneurs with great ideas are being provided with seed funding and 12 months of business and leadership coaching and technical mentoring to facilitate the startup of their project. Read more at the GFAR blog: blog.gfar.net/tag/YAP

EduMala mentoring program for Nepali agricultural professionals

The EduMala Mentoring Program is a blended online/offline mentoring program developed by YPARD Nepal to build the interpersonal skills of Nepali young agricultural professionals. The first session, held in January, saw 34 mentees learn how to communicate more effectively, network, write proposals, publish in academic journals, about government youth policies, entrepreneurship and event management.

Mentor and Mentee Profile

The more I read on youth mentoring, especially YPARD’s mentoring programmes, the more I got inspired and tempted to mentor young people.
I remained restless, until I could launch myself a Rural Youth Mentoring-2017 programme at my own institute - ICAR- Indian Veterinary Research Institute - on 28th February, 2017.

Professionals want to share; youth wants learn; that’s why the platform arises. Besides being a platform, EduMala is a visionary, dynamic and innovative idea. So we encourage you to be the part of it. If you would like to know more about our program, or interested to join as mentor (for particular session), please send us an email to mentoring@edumala.com.

We all need experienced mentors for our starts up to be successful. The entrepreneurial mentoring program could not come at a better time and I consider myself extremely lucky to be selected into the program. Specifically, information on business model canvas from my mentor has been very applicable while I was drafting my poultry business model.

My expectations coming to the online mentoring program for young women entrepreneurs is to grow my business to the extent of being recognised internationally. In addition, i want to radically inspire more youths to passionately go into poultry farming as a business.

The online mentoring program for young women entrepreneurs is of great deal to me. This is because as a young entrepreneur who entered into business with no practical experience i need a lot of trainings, coaching and mentoring. The mentoring is the Perfect platform for me to grow and expand and in turn reach more and more people and help them grow and expand as well.

I would encourage my fellow youth to not only think of getting a job after graduating from school, instead they should think differently by creating jobs. Above all I would like to urge institutions and government to help youth who are showing interest in farming by providing with them financial support.

“My expectations from this program is to contribute to raising incomes of the rural woman society and to give them brilliant ideas about further impacts of their activity for developing natural resources through assisting and teaching them to develop their own projects. Under this program I would like to give them opportunity to develop their ability under my leading skills. “

“With a background in political science and international affairs, I believe I have a compelling story to young Ghanaian girls that no matter your background, you can play a significant role in the agribusiness sector.”

I believe that the online mentoring program is one of the best platform for promotion and empowerment of women who want to be self-dependent. Also, being mentored by experts who are already in the field of Agro-Business Promotion will give me support, strength, confidence and knowledge to attain the vision that our company has envisioned for a sustainable Nepal in vegetable crop production